said to constitute an epoch in the history of sacerdotal celibacy. They
enunciate no new principles, they threaten no new punishments, yet are
they noteworthy as marking the settled policy of the church at a period
when it had acquired that plenitude of power and vigor of organization
which insured at least an outward show of obedience to its commands.
The successive labors of so long a series of pontiffs, during more
than a century and a half, carrying with them the cumulative authority
of Rome, had gradually broken down resistance, and the Lateran canons
were the definitive expression of its discipline on this subject.
Accordingly, though we shall see how little was accomplished in
securing the purity of the priesthood, which was the ostensible object
of the rule, yet hereafter there are to be found few traces of marriage
in holy orders, except in the distant countries to which reference has
already been made.
Yet the readiness to relax the rule when a substantial advantage
was to be gained still continued, and when the effort, commenced at
the council of Lyons in 1274, to reunite the Greek church under the
supremacy of the Holy See was apparently successful, Nicholas III.
stoutly insisted upon the addition of “_filioque_” to the Symbol, but
was discreetly silent as to separating the wives of priests from their
husbands, promising in general terms that in all that merely concerned
ritual observances the way should be made easy for them.[823]
In Southern Italy, when the churches were actually brought together
under the domination of Rome, priests of Greek origin were allowed
to retain their wives, but married clerks of Latin parentage were not
permitted to enter holy orders without separation. It not infrequently
happened that the latter endeavored to elude the prohibition by getting
themselves ordained in the Greek church, and it became necessary to
denounce severe penalties not only against them, but against the
prelates who permitted it.[824]
XXI.
RESULTS.
The unrelaxing efforts of two centuries had at length achieved an
inevitable triumph. One by one the different churches of Latin
Christendom yielded to the fiat of the successor of St. Peter, and
their ecclesiastics were forced to forego the privilege of assuming
the most sacred of earthly ties with the sanction of heaven and the
approbation of man. Sacerdotalism vindicated its claim to exclusive
obedience; the church successfully asserted its right to command the
entire life of its members, and to sunder all the bonds that might
allure them to render a divided allegiance. In theory, at least, all
who professed a religious life or assumed the sacred ministry were
given up wholly to the awful service which they had undertaken: no
selfishly personal aspirations could divert their energies from the
aggrandizement of their class, nor were the temporal possessions
of the establishment to be exposed to the minute but all-pervading
dilapidation of the wife and family.
If these were the objects of the movement inaugurated by Damiani and
Hildebrand, and followed up with such unrelenting vigor by Calixtus
and Alexander and Innocent, the history of the mediæval church attests
how fully they were attained. It is somewhat instructive, indeed, to
observe that in the rise of the papal power to its culmination under
Innocent III. it was precisely the pontiffs most conspicuous for their
enforcement of the rule of celibacy who were likewise most prominent in
their assertion of the supremacy, temporal and spiritual, of the head
of the Roman church. Whether or not they recognized and acknowledged
the connection, they labored as though the end in view was clearly
appreciated, and their triumphs on the one field were sure to be
followed by corresponding successes on the other.
Yet in all this the ostensible object was always represented to be
the purity of the church and of its ministers. The other advantages
were either systematically ignored or but casually alluded to. One
warning voice, indeed, was raised, in a quarter where it would have at
least commanded respectful attention, had not the church appeared to
imagine itself superior to the ordinary laws of cause and effect. While
Innocent II. was laboring to enforce his new doctrine that ordination
and religious vows were destructive of marriage, St. Bernard, the
ascetic reformer of monachism and the foremost ecclesiastic of his day,
was thundering against the revival of Manichæism. The heresies of the
Albigenses respecting marriage were to be combated, and, in performing
this duty, he pointed out with startling vigor the evils to the church
and to mankind of the attempt to enforce a purity incompatible with
human nature. Deprive the church of honorable marriage, he exclaimed,
and you fill her with concubinage, incest, and all manner of nameless
vice and uncleanness.[825] It was still an age of faith; and while
earnest men like St. Bernard could readily anticipate the evils
attendant upon the asceticism of heretics, they could yet persuade
themselves, as the Council of Trent subsequently expressed it, that
God would not deny the gift of chastity to those who rightly sought it
in the bosom of the true church—though St. Bernard himself confessed
that crimes which he dared not even to name commonly followed after
the fornication, adultery, and incest which specially characterized
innumerable ministers of Christ.[826] It remains for us to see what was
the success of the attempt thus deliberately to tempt the Lord.
It is somewhat significant that when, in France, the rule of celibacy
was completely restored, strict churchmen should have found it
necessary also to revive the hideously suggestive restriction which
denied to the priest the society of his mother or of his sister. Even
in the profoundest barbarism of the tenth century, or the unbridled
license of the eleventh; even when Damiani descanted upon the disorders
of his contemporaries with all the cynicism of the most exalted
asceticism, horrors such as these are not alluded to. It is reserved
for the advancement of the thirteenth century and the enforcement of
celibacy to show us how outraged human nature may revenge itself and
protest against the shackles imposed by zealous sacerdotalism or
unreasoning bigotry. In 1208, Cardinal Guala, Innocent’s legate in
France, issued an order in which he not only repeated the threadbare
prohibitions respecting focariæ and concubines, but commanded that
even mothers and other relatives should not be allowed to reside with
men in holy orders, the devil being the convenient personage on whom,
as usual, was thrown the responsibility of the scandals which were
known to occur frequently under such circumstances.[827] That this
decree was not allowed to pass into speedy oblivion is shown by a
reference to it as still well known and in force a century later, in
the statutes of the church of Tréguier.[828] And that the necessity
for it was not evanescent may be assumed from its repetition in the
regulations of the see of Nismes, the date of which is uncertain, but
probably attributable to the close of the fourteenth century.[829]
At the same time, we have evidence that Cardinal Guala’s efforts
were productive of little effect. Four years later, in 1212, we find
Innocent formally authorizing the prelates of France mercifully to
pardon those who had been excommunicated under Guala’s rules, with
the suggestive proviso that the power thus conferred was not to be
used for the purpose of extorting unhallowed gains.[830] Still more
significant is the fact that in the same year Innocent dispatched
another legate, Cardinal Robert, duly commissioned to renew the endless
task of purifying the Gallican church. Guala’s efforts would seem to
have already passed into oblivion, for in a council which Cardinal
Robert held in Paris, he gravely promulgated a canon forbidding the
priesthood from keeping their concubines so openly as to give rise to
scandal, and threatening the recalcitrants with excommunication if they
should persist in retaining their improper consorts for forty days
after receiving notice.[831] That monachism was no less productive of
sin in the depraved moral atmosphere of the age is rendered evident
by other canons of the same council, which prohibit both monks and
nuns from sleeping two in a bed, with the avowed object of repressing
crimes against nature.[832] It may well be asked what was the value of
the continence aimed at in monastic vows when the whole body of the
monastic orders was the subject of such degrading regulations as these.
The clergy of France were not exceptional, and, unfortunately,
there can be no denial of the fact that notorious and undisguised
illicit unions, or still more debasing secret licentiousness, was a
universal and pervading vice of the church throughout Christendom.
Its traces amid all the ecclesiastical legislation of the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries are too broad and deep to be
called into question, and if no evidence remained except the constant
and unavailing efforts to repress it, that alone would be sufficient.
National and local synods, pastoral epistles, statutes of churches,
all the records of ecclesiastical discipline are full of it. Now
deploring and now threatening, exhausting ingenuity in devising new
regulations and more effective punishments, the prelates of those
ages found themselves involved in a task as endless and as bootless
as that of the Danaidæ. Occasionally, indeed, it is lost sight of
momentarily, when the exactions and usurpations of the laity, or the
gradual extension of secular jurisdiction monopolized the attention
of those who were bound to defend the privileges of their class; but,
with these rare exceptions, it may be asserted as a general truth that
scarcely a synod met, or a body of laws was drawn up to govern some
local church, in which the subject did not receive a prominent position
and careful consideration. It would be wearisome and unprofitable to
recapitulate here the details of this fruitless iteration. Without by
any means exhausting the almost limitless materials for investigation,
I have collected a formidable mass of references upon the subject, but
an examination of them shows so little of novelty and so constant a
recurrence to the starting-point, that no new principles can be evolved
from them, and their only interest lies in their universality, and in
demonstrating how resultless was the unceasing effort to remove the
uneffaceable plague-spot.
Spasmodic efforts, it is true, occasionally wrought a temporary
improvement, as when Alexander IV., in 1259, proclaimed to the world
that licentious ecclesiastics were the cause of all the evils under
which the church was groaning, for through them the name of God was
blasphemed throughout the world, the sacraments were polluted, the
Catholic religion lost the reverence of the faithful, the people were
deprived of the benefits of divine service, the substance of the
church was dissipated, the Word of God was defiled by their impure
lips, heretics were encouraged in their opposition, oppressors were
emboldened to persecution, and the sacrilegious were able to expose the
whole church to mockery and contempt. To alleviate these troubles, he
not only ordered the prelates of Christendom to prosecute all offences
of this nature with the utmost severity, but, recognizing his own court
as an obstacle to reform, he surrendered his appellate jurisdiction in
such cases, and forbade all appeals to Rome.[833] His earnestness bore
some fruit, and many prelates were stimulated to reform their flocks,
causing large numbers of ecclesiastics to be expelled. A contemporary
rhymester, Adam de la Halle (better known perhaps as Le Bossu d’Arras),
thus alludes to the effects of the Bull:—
“Et chascuns le pape encosa
Quant tant de bons clers desposa.—
—Romme a bien le tierche partie
Des clers fais sers et amatis.”[834]
As in all similar attempts, however, the results were but transitory.
Ferry, Bishop of Orleans, would scarce have been murdered, in 1299, by
a knight whose daughter he had seduced, had the father felt that there
was any chance of punishing the criminal by having the canons enforced
against him.[835]
In the confessed nullity of penal legislation it was natural for the
church to have recourse to her supernatural armory, and accordingly
we have ample store of legends framed with the hope of frightening
by spiritual terrors those who were indurated to canon and decretal.
The dead concubine of a priest was seen chased by infernal demons,
and a knight who sought to protect her had a handful of hair left in
his grasp by her mad terror; and the reality of the awful scene was
verified on opening her tomb and finding her tresses deficient. So
a nun who had yielded to temptation and had sought to conceal her
frailty by murdering her child, dying unconfessed, was seen wandering
hopelessly with a burning infant clasped to her bosom, which she
proclaimed was to be her torment throughout eternity.[836] It is no
wonder that the well-meant ingenuity which devised these tales met
with slender reward, and that the threat of post-mortem punishment
was as powerless as that of temporal penalties, for these tales were
counterbalanced by other superstitions, such as that which taught that
the most sinful, even among laymen, could obtain eternal salvation
by the simple expedient of enveloping himself in a monastic habit
on his death-bed. The Benedictines had well-authenticated cases in
plenty where the most vicious of men, by adopting this plan, were
rescued by St. Benedict himself from the hands of demons conducting
them to eternal punishment, in spite of Satan’s complaints that he
was defrauded of his rights.[837] The Franciscans contended with the
Benedictines as to the efficacy of their respective patrons, and
related with pride that St. Francis visited purgatory every year and
carried with him to heaven the souls of his followers—a general plan of
salvation which gave his vestments a decided superiority over those of
the older order. As the practice became more common, it was recognized
as equally dangerous to the welfare of the faithful and to the revenues
of the church, and was condemned as a pernicious error.[838]
* * * * *
So open and avowed was the shame of the church that the Neapolitan
code, promulgated about 1231 by the enlightened Frederic II.,
absolutely interfered to give a quasi legitimacy to the children of
ecclesiastics, and removed, to a certain extent, their disability of
inheritance. The imperial officials were ordered to assign appropriate
shares in parental estates to such children, notwithstanding their
illegitimacy, conditioned on the payment of an annual tax to the
imperial court; and parents were not allowed to alienate their
property to the prejudice of such children, any more than in cases of
the offspring of lawful wedlock.[839] The numbers and influence of
the class thus protected must indeed have been great to induce such
interference in their favor.
We have already seen ecclesiastical authority for the assertion
that in the Spanish Peninsula the children sprung from such illicit
connections rivalled in numbers the offspring of the laity. That they
were numerous elsewhere may be presumed when we see Innocent IV.,
in 1248, forced to grant to the province of Livonia the privilege
of having them eligible to holy orders, except when born of parents
involved in monastic vows,[840] for necessity alone could excuse so
flagrant a departure from the canons enunciated during the preceding
two centuries. A similar conclusion is deducible from the fact that
in the municipal code in force throughout Northern Germany during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they were deemed of sufficient
importance to be entitled to a separate place in the classification of
wer-gilds, or blood-moneys; while the aim of the lawgiver to stigmatize
them is manifested by his placing them below the peasant, deeming them
superior only to the juggler;[841] and that this was not a provision
of transient force is clear from the commentary upon it in a body of
law dating from the end of the fourteenth century.[842] Nor is the
evidence less convincing which may be drawn from the use of the old
German word _pfaffenkind_, or priest’s son, which became generally used
as equivalent to bastard.[843] It would not, indeed, be difficult to
understand the numbers of this class of the population if ecclesiastics
in general followed the example of Henry III., Bishop of Liége, whose
natural children amounted to no less than sixty-five.[844]
The direct encouragement thus given to illicit connections, by
providing for the children sprung from them, neutralized one of the
principal modes by which the church endeavored to suppress them.
The innumerable canons issued during this period, forbidding and
pronouncing null and void all testamentary provisions in favor of
concubines and descendants, prove not only how much stress was laid
upon this as an efficient means of repression, but also how little
endeavor was made by the guilty parties to conceal their sin. As all
testaments came within the sphere of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it
would seem that there should have been no difficulty in enforcing
regulations of this kind, yet their constant repetition proves either
that those who were intrusted with their execution were habitually
remiss, or else that the popular feelings were in favor of the
unfortunates, and interfered with the efficacy of the laws.
A single instance, out of many that might be cited, will illustrate
this. In 1225 the Cardinal-legate Conrad held, at Mainz, a national
council of the German empire, of which one of the canons declared
that, in order to abolish the custom of ecclesiastics leaving to
their concubines and children the fruits of their benefices, not only
should such legacies be void, but those guilty of the attempt should
lie unburied, all who endeavored to enforce such testaments should be
anathematized, and the church where it was permitted should lie under
an interdict as long as the wrong was permitted.[845] The terrible
rigor of these provisions shows how deep seated was the evil aimed at;
nor were they uncalled for when we see a will, executed in 1218 by no
less a personage than Gotfrid, Archdeacon of Wurzburg, in which he
leaves legacies to the children whom he confesses to have been born in
sin, and of whom he expects his relatives to take charge.[846] Had any
earnest attempt been made to enforce the canons of the Legate, they
would have been amply sufficient to eradicate the evil; yet their utter
inefficiency is demonstrated by the council of Fritzlar in 1246, and
that of Cologne in 1260. The former of these was held by the Archbishop
of Mainz; it has no canons directed against concubinage, which was as
public as ever, but it deplores the dilapidation of the temporalities
of the church by the testamentary provisions of priests in favor of
their guilty partners and children, and it repeats, with additional
emphasis, the regulations of 1225.[847] The latter renews the complaint
that priests not only continue their evil courses throughout life,
but are not ashamed, on their death-beds, to leave to their children
the patrimony of Christ; and another provision is equally significant
in forbidding priests to be present at the marriages of their
children, or that such marriages should be solemnized with pomp and
ostentation.[848] The following year another council, held at Mainz,
repeated the prohibition as to the diversion of church property to the
consorts and natural children of priests;[849] while that regarding the
solemnization of their children’s marriages was renewed by the synod of
Olmutz in 1342.[850] In 1416 the synod of Breslau deplored that the old
canons were forgotten and despised, and that priests were not ashamed
to bequeath to their bastards accumulations of property which would
form fit portions for lofty nobles.[851] How thoroughly in fact it was
deemed a matter of course for the children of ecclesiastics to marry
well and to have good dowries, is to be seen in Chaucer’s description
of the wife of “deinous Simekin”, the proud miller of Trompington:——
“A wif he hadde, comen of noble kin;
The person of the toun hire father was.
With hire he yaf ful many a panne of bras,
For that Simkin shuld in his blood allie.
She was yfostered in a nonnerie.” (The Reves Tale.)
As time wore on, and the clergy, despite the innumerable admonitions
and threats which were everywhere showered upon them, persisted in
retaining their female companions, they appear, in some places, to
have gradually assumed the privilege as a matter of right; and, what
is even more remarkable, they seem to have had a certain measure of
success in the assumption. In 1284 the Papal Legate, Gerard Bishop
of Sabina, at the Council of Amalfi, renewed and strengthened the
decretals of Alexander III. respecting the concubinary priests of the
Neapolitan provinces, ordering the ejection of all who should not
separate from their partners within a month, suspending all prelates
who should neglect to enforce the rule, and fining heavily those who,
as in so many other places, made the frailties of their subordinates
a source of filthy gain.[852] The severity of these provisions was as
unsuccessful as usual, and at length the secular power endeavored to
come to the assistance of the ecclesiastical authorities. The pious
Charles the Lame of Naples, whose close alliance with Rome rendered
him eager in everything that would gratify the head of the church,
about the year 1300 imposed a heavy fine on the concubines of priests
if they persisted in their sin for a year after excommunication. This
law, like so many similar ones, soon fell into desuetude, but in 1317,
under his son Robert the Good, the justiciary of the Principato Citra
undertook to put it into execution. In the diocese of Marsico the
clergy openly resisted these proceedings, boldly laid their complaints
before the king, and were so energetic that Robert was obliged to issue
an ordinance directing the discontinuance of all processes before the
lay tribunals, and granting that the concubines should be left to the
care of the ecclesiastical courts alone. These women thus, by reason of
their sinful courses, came to be invested with a quasi-ecclesiastical
character, and to enjoy the dearly prized immunities attached to that
position, at a time when the church was vigorously striving to uphold
and extend the privileges which the civil lawyers were systematically
laboring to undermine. Nor was the pretension thus advanced suffered to
lapse. Towards the close of the same century, Carlo Malatesta of Rimini
applied to Ancarono, a celebrated doctor of canon and civil law (“juris
canonici speculum et civilis anchora”), to know whether he could
impose penalties on the concubines of priests, and the learned jurist
replied decidedly in the negative; while other legal authorities have
not hesitated to state that such women are fully entitled to immunity
from secular jurisdiction, as belonging to the families of clerks—_de
familia clericorum_.[853] When a premium was thus offered for sin,
and the mistresses of priests—like the _maîtresses-en-titre_ of the
Bourbons—acquired a certain honorable position among their fellows from
the mere fact of their ministering to the unhallowed lusts of their
pastors, it is not to be wondered at if such connections multiplied
and flourished, and if the humble laity came to regard them as an
established institution.
Robert of Naples was not the only potentate who found an organized
resistance to his well-meant endeavors to restore discipline. When, in
1410, the stout William, Bishop-elect of Paderborn, had triumphed with
fire and sword over his powerful foes, the Archbishop of Cologne and
the Count of Cleves, he turned his energies to the reformation of the
dissolute morals of his monks. They positively refused to submit to the
ejection of their women from the monasteries, and he at length found
the task too impracticable even for his warlike temper. For seven long
years the quarrel lasted, legal proceedings being varied by attempts
at poison on the one side, and reckless devastations by the episcopal
troops on the other, until the prelate, worn out by the stubbornness of
his flock, was obliged to give way.[854]